NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Irwin Tools Night Race

Topics:  Irwin Tools Night Race

Kasey Kahne
Juan Pablo Montoya
August 24, 2013

BRISTOL, TENNESSEE

KERRY THARP: Let's roll right into our post‑race for tonight's 53th annual Irwin Tools Night Race here at Bristol Motor Speedway. Our third‑place finisher was Juan Pablo Montoya. He drove the No.42 target Chevrolet for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. Congratulations on a very solid run. You had a contending car all night. Just talk about how things went for you and maybe what you were thinking there at the end.
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: I'll tell you, we had a really good car all night. We were a little tight at the start of the night and we made some good changes. The car had good speed. I got caught speeding there with like 170 to go or something, and that kind of hurt us. But I'll tell you the truth, I think it helped us because if it would have played right, we probably would have run out of gas. Our fuel mileage wasn't as good as the 20.
It made it more interesting. I really had to use the brakes and really cooked the front tires there at the end, but it was fun.
KERRY THARP: And our race runner up is Kasey Kahne. He drove the No.5 Farmers Insurance Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. Kasey, talk about your race out there tonight. Certainly you were giving it all you could to get past the 20, and it was a lot of give and take and certainly put on a great show tonight here for the fans at Bristol. A heck of a race down there towards the end.
KASEY KAHNE: Yeah, I thought Matt did a good job of just running as hard as he could as close to the wall as possible, which helped him a lot, and then I was just trying to gain speed. I had a better car. We were on the right strategy, and I just couldn't clear him. There was a couple shots I took, and I had to have been close, but I could feel him on the right side of my car, and I just didn't clear him. I didn't figure out how to get by. It's disappointing not to win here. I thought we had the best car the last 200 laps, and it was a lot of work. We didn't start the best, but Kenny made a lot of good calls, and our strategy was perfect at the end. It was a great night for us, good for the points and things, but yeah, I wish I could have figured out how to get by him.

Q. Kasey, you said on the TV interview, first you said I had options, and then you came back later and said you were upset with yourself for not figuring out a way to win. What options did you have?
KASEY KAHNE: Well, the only options‑‑
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: Taking him out.

Q. Which obviously would have helped Juan.
KASEY KAHNE: That's the only option I have.
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: I was hoping they were going to wreck on the white flag to be honest.
KASEY KAHNE: I had already tried to clear him on a slide job type deal and he just didn't brake and stayed in the gas and we were going to hit each other. I don't know how all that was going to work out. I needed a win bad, but I also needed a finish, and I just didn't do anything crazy. I just basically ran as hard as I could, tried to pass him two different times and ran on his bumper and hoped he'd screw up, and he really never did.

Q. Juan, you came back from a speeding penalty and you salvaged the day and finished third. Based on your situation is anything short of wins kind of satisfying at this stage?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: It is. To be honest with you, where we are with the team and the result, if I got in, it's pretty good. I'm still running until the end of the year with Target, and I want to make sure I can do the best for them.

Q. Kasey, I think a lot of people would probably say that you cemented your reputation tonight as a clean racer. Is it just something that you don't believe in, to wreck somebody as revenge or take retaliation, because certainly you joked about it on Twitter that they had gotten you four times this year and you could have exacted your revenge tonight and you didn't. Is that simply against your code?
KASEY KAHNE: Seems that way. You know, I've always really raced that way. I don't have any experience doing it for one, and for two, that's just kind of how I've always raced.
I think more than anything it's just discouraging when other guys, like Matt in his case at Watkins Glen, watching that afterwards, all he had to do was lift, and he didn't because he didn't want to get passed from behind or whatever the situation was. It wasn't a mistake like he got loose or anything, he just didn't lift and wiped us out and those kind of things are discouraging because that's not how I race, but at the same time, more times than not, Matt races me clean.
I don't know, I just don't‑‑ I think at the end of the day I just don't wreck people.
KERRY THARP: Thanks for putting on a great show out there this evening.